more warmly or universally approved. The object of all insurance, of whatever kind, is, to equalize losses, and to distribute among many, burthens and calamities, which must otherwise overwhelm an individual.

5. Lastly, the welfare and happiness of mankind, may, beyond measure, be advanced, by promoting the spirit and the prevalence of peace. The calamities, which mankind have suffered from war, are too great to admit of any adequate description. Cicero refers to a treatise, written by Dicæarchus, a copious writer and distinguished Peripatetic philosopher, concerning the destruction of mankind (de interitu hominum), in which, it seems, he enumerated all the great causes, which have been most destructive to mankind, pestilence, famine, inundations, irruptions of wild beasts, &c.,* and came to the conclusion, that a vastly greater number of men had been destroyed by wars and convulsions, than by all other calamities combined.†

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Originally, wars knew no other termination than the destruction. of one of the parties; and generally this was not accomplished, without irreparable injury being done to the other. Both parties were severe, if not equal, sufferers. Revenge and retaliation. were the spirit with which these contests were waged, and the conflicts to which those direful passions led, were, above measure, sanguinary and destructive. "Ten years were employed," says Sismondi, "in subjecting the Gauls to the Romans. And, if we believe the conqueror himself, the conquest was not achieved but by a frightful massacre. Never did man cause so much blood to flow as Cæsar; and, in his narrative, the Gallic nation appears to have been destroyed rather than conquered." Prisoners of war were either indiscriminately put to death on the field of battle, or were reserved for the still more cruel fate of torture. Domestic servitude or an enormous ransom was the mildest lot, which, according to universal usage, they could expect. Frequently entire countries, in the utter devastation and overwhelming ruin with which they were overtaken, bore melancholy witness of the fierce and unrelenting passions awakened by war.

Ezekiel xiv. 21. De Officiis, Lib. II. c. 5. Histoire des Français, Tome I. p. 5; C. Julii Comment. de Bello Gallico, passim.

Although the spirit of modern warfare has been very much softened, war still continues to be the greatest calamity with which a righteous Heaven punishes the guilty nations, which call down its wrath upon themselves. It is still the most desolating of all national scourges. It is desolating, in its destruction of human life, in its interruption of all the chief employments and pursuits which adorn society, and, especially, in the demoralization. by which it strikes at the root of national prosperity and happiness. Christianity does not positively forbid war, but its spirit. and tendency are adverse to violence of every kind, and to the rousing of the evil passions, which is an almost inevitable consequence of a resort to violence and strife. It enjoins its mild and peaceable spirit on every individual, and trusts, that, as this divine spirit becomes more and more generally the rule by which men's actions are governed, this mode of terminating national disputes, condemned, as it is, by right reason and enlightened policy, as much as it is opposed to its own spirit and precepts, will eventually be discontinued, and will ultimately be known only as matter of history, among other records of the crimes, follies, and absurdities of mankind, and of the calamities and sufferings, with which, under the promptings of their evil passions, they have been willing to afflict themselves and one another.

But, while we may console ourselves with the reflection, that the fierce and unrelenting spirit of war has been mitigated by Christianity, since the days when Dicæarchus wrote his treatise concerning the destruction of mankind, and, trusting in God, may refresh ourselves with the belief, that "peace on earth, good-will toward men," will, in a preeminent sense, at "the times and seasons, which the Father has put in his own power," prevail universally; still the destruction of human life, the waste of treasure, and the misery of every kind, entailed by war, continues to be most lamentable and indescribable. It has been calculated, in the Paris "Quotidienne," that the French revolution, from 1789 to 1815, cost a loss in lives of 25,707,139 men, slain in battle, killed in popular tumults, and executed. The waste of treasure to France, during the same period, has been estimated. at £600,000,000 sterling, nearly 3,000,000,000 of dollars.

* Walsh's National Gazette, for March 12th, 1829, and December 23d, 1830.

During the same period, too, France is stated to have suffered from sixty-two thousand conflagrations, conspiracies, and insurrections. Dr. Franklin was accustomed to say, "that he almost believed there never had been a good war, or a bad peace." Again, says he, "At length we are in peace, God be praised, and long, very long, may it continue. All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones. When will mankind be

convinced of this, and agree to settle their differences by arbitration? Were they to do it, even by the cast of a die, it would be better than by fighting and destroying each other." Washington says, "It is time for the age of knight-errantry and mad heroism to be at an end. Young military men, who want to reap the harvest of laurels, care not, I suppose, how many seeds of war are sown; but, for the sake of humanity, it is devoutly to be wished, that the manly employment of agriculture, and the humanizing benefits of commerce, would supersede the waste of war and the rage of conquest; that the swords might be turned into ploughshares, the spears into pruning-hooks, and, as the Scripture expresses it, the nations learn war no more."

The spirit and design of our institutions are essentially and preeminently peaceful; as much so, perhaps, as the present condition of human nature, and of human affairs, can well permit. No sentiment has been more universal, from the establishment of the independence of the country, than that its essential interest consists in cultivating amicable relations with all nations. The entire American people have sanctioned this sentiment in the most emphatic of all ways, to wit, by declaring, on the face of the most elaborate, solemn, and authoritative instrument (the Constitution of the United States) which they have ever enacted, that its great objects are, "to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity." Only one of these objects has any reference to war whatever, and that is limited to war in self-defence.

THE END.